Aleksi Aaltonen

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Assistant Professor

I was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the Richard J. Fox School of Business and Management of Temple University — 1 July 2018

Research paper as academic storytelling

An academic research paper must follow many boring rules of the scholarly community — yet it is useful to view academic publishing as telling of engaging stories. 7 min read in Medium — 27 April 2018

The new microscope?

Computational methods may be the new microscope for social science – a presentation on practicing computational methods to our PhD students at WBS. — 6 February 2017

Sharing economy is not just a fad

Here is my deck of slides from a sharing economy workshop at Aalto University for brilliant Inforte.fi PhD students. — 7 October 2016

8 statements on startup ecosystems

I squeezed the findings of 252 top management papers into 8 simple statements on startup ecosystems. Slides and a short blog post — 30 August 2016

Brexit is not a disaster for startups

...but it isn’t a great thing either. 4 min read in Medium — 19 July 2016

BLOCKCHAIN WILL SAVE US!

Blockchain has just become the next iteration of the Standard Technology Vision. Just 2 min read in Medium — 15 July 2016

A course to die for—apply now!

My new BSc Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship course starts at WBS in autumn 2017. — 30 June 2016

PhD student to start in 2017

I am looking for a prospective PhD student to develop an interesting proposal with a view to start in September 2017. Read more from this blog post. — 9 June 2016

7 things about entrepreneurship

A working paper Factors Shaping Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and the Rise of Entrepreneurship: A View from Top Management Journals highlights seven important findings about entrepreneurial ecosystems. In collaboration with Demos Helsinki the Naked Approach project. — 27 May 2016

How to 'business model'?

There are plenty of tools for business modelling. Before choosing one, read this short presentation I gave for the Board of Demos Helsinki. — 14 April 2016

Toward modular empirical research

Academia should learn from software development to make empirical research a truly collective endeavor. A talk at the Alan Turing Institute Symposium on Reproducibility for Data-Intensive Research, just 4 min read in Medium. — 7 April 2016

Apple vs. greedy investors

Greedy investors can suck life out of even the most successful company. Apple may not be able to resist the stupidity of the markets. Just 2 min read in Medium. — 26 January 2016

Happy birthday Wikipedia!

The future of Wikipedia is unclear, but let’s celebrate its spectacular achievement so far! A post in the Conversation, cited by BBC and the Daily Star. — 16 January 2016

Audiences as data-based products

Big data brings out new kinds of advertising audiences. More in my presentation "Data and Value: Advertising Audiences as Data-based Products" for our faculty group at WBS. — 19 November 2015

Who broke Twitter?

People broke Twitter, just as they will break any social media platform unless the platform learns to curate content for the crowds. Just 3 min read in Medium. — 16 November 2015

Journal publication

Management Science published my article Cumulative Growth in User-Generated Content Production: Evidence from Wikipedia with Stephan Seiler. Full text is available here. — 30 October 2015

On the generativity of social media

Generativity is under-theorized and not well understood in the field of information systems: a presentation with Cristina Alaimo at 4th Innovation in Information Infrastructures (III) Workshop. — 14 October 2015

How to manage your research data?

Avoid turning your research into an administrative nightmare with a MInimal Data Archival System (MIDAS). 10 min read in Medium. — 10 October 2015

Parempi johtaminen avuksi

Finnish economy is in bad shape but better management culture and practices could help. I gave a short speech (in Finnish) at the Demos Helsinki 10th anniversary celebration. — 10 September 2015

Working by watchings ads

Watching advertisements may soon become a new form of work without employment: a presentation at EGOS Colloquium and a draft paper. — 3 July 2015

Journal publication

Organization Studies published my article Building Governance Capability in Online Social Production: Insights from Wikipedia with Giovan Francesco Lanzara. It's completely open access! — 9 June 2015

Data-driven music discovery

Akarapat Charoenpanich presented our joint paper (How) does data-based music discovery work? at ECIS. The presentation is here. — 27 May 2015

Chairman

I was re-elected as the Chairman of the Board at Demos Helsinki think tank. Looking forward to work with our new board members Tuija Talvitie (CMI) and Tuomo Pentikäinen (BiiSafe). — 11 May 2015

Talking about IoT on

Live discussion with Johannes Koponen and Marjaana Toiminen about the Internet of Things on Yle Puhe radio (in Finnish). — 11 May 2015

Beware of the Startup Business Model

Why value creation and value capture tend to diverge in the digital ecosystem, and why to avoid the Startup Business Model in my talk for the IT University of Copenhagen students. — 27 March 2015

Learning to govern Wikipedia

How did Wikipedia learn to govern itself? Some hints in my presentation "Building Governance Capability in Online Social Production" for our faculty group at WBS. — 4 March 2015

The Future Avenues for IS Research

I participated in a panel at LSE together with distinguished professors Kallinikos, Markus and Merali. Here are my introductory notes and a blog post on how IS scholars should grab intellectual land quickly and leave old, depleted pastures to established disciplines. — 13 February 2015

Telecoms industry needs shake-up

My opinion in The Conversation blog (with a couple of interesting comments) on how to fix the chronic lack of consumer innovation in the UK telecommunications industry — 19 December 2014

Motivating open content production

My co-author Stephan Seiler from Stanford University put together a nice summary of our efforts to understand motivational externalities in Wikipedia-style content production. It’s called Wikipedia: The Value of Open Content Production, in the CentrePiece magazine by the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE. — 6 October 2014

Strategy behind Android One

Google’s Android One initiative is about future growth and pre-empting competition. Read my analysis from The Conversation blog. — 24 September 2014

Assistant Professor

I am now an Assistant Professor at Warwick Business School. Looking forward to work with Prof. Ola Henfridsson and other great faculty! More about my work here. — 1 September 2014

Entrepreneurs, academia in Finland

In a small country, global problems and competition are present in everything we do. This is a speech I gave for new LSE students and alumni at LSE Alumni Association Finland event at the British Embassy in Helsinki — 20 August 2014

Entrepreneurship interview for LSE

I gave a short interview about entrepreneurship for the London School of Economics and Political Science website — 27 May 2014

Moves app acquired by Facebook

Moves is an automatic activity tracking app for iPhone and Android. I cofounded the company, helped to raise 1.5 million GBP funding and to create Moves product concept and brand. Apple chose Moves as the Best App of 2013 in the Fitness Revolution category, and the company was acquired by Facebook in April 2014. Read more about the acquisition in FT, Guardian, Wired, TechCrunch and WSJ. — 24 April 2014

Journal publication

Journal of Information Technology published my article Everything Counts in Large Amounts: A Critical Realist Case Study on Data-based Production with Niccoló Tempini. Full text is available here. — 7 January 2014